[VB] Dumpbits - Binary representation of numbers or strings

[penagate]

I recently felt the need too display some numbers in binary, and after getting sick of working it out on paper, this function was born (I completely forgot you can use the Windows calculator ) And just now I added the facility to display the binary output of strings as well.

To call it just pass either a string or number and optionally a fixed length for the output

Public Function DumpBits(ByRef pValue As Variant, Optional ByVal lLenDesired As Long = -1) As String
Dim chBuffer()  As Byte
Dim i           As Long
Dim j           As Long
 
    If (VarType(pValue) = vbString) Then
        If (lLenDesired < 1) Then lLenDesired = Len(pValue) * 2
 
        ReDim chBuffer(lLenDesired)
        chBuffer = pValue
 
        For i = UBound(chBuffer) To 0 Step -1
            For j = 1 To 8
                DumpBits = CStr(Abs((chBuffer(i) And (2 ^ (j - 1))) > 0)) & DumpBits
            Next j
        Next i
 
      Else
        If (lLenDesired < 1) Then
            lLenDesired = 0
            Do While (pValue \ (2 ^ lLenDesired)) > 0
                lLenDesired = lLenDesired + 1
            Loop
        End If
 
        For i = 1 To lLenDesired
            DumpBits = CStr(Abs((pValue And (2 ^ (i - 1))) > 0)) & DumpBits
        Next i
 
    End If
 
    If (Len(DumpBits) > lLenDesired) Then
        Do While Left$(DumpBits, 1) = "0" And Len(DumpBits) > lLenDesired
            DumpBits = Right$(DumpBits, Len(DumpBits) - 1)
        Loop
 
      ElseIf (Len(DumpBits) < lLenDesired) Then
        Do While Len(DumpBits) < lLenDesired
            DumpBits = "0" & DumpBits
        Loop
 
    End If
End Function